Speech for Athletic Director conference

It is my honor and privilege to be talking with you today. You may be wondering why I am the speaker today, never having been an athletic director, or even an athlete. Well, one of our students said it all the other day at our Open House. I’m taking a risk here. Each girl on the panel went down the line telling the audience what sports they played. She doesn’t play sports so when it came to her - She said, "And I'm an athletic supporter." Forgive me, but she was right. That's what I am as well. And in a few minutes I will tell you why. But first, to put my background in perspective, I graduated from Ursuline in 1970. Sports were a rarity among girls at that time. Our gym was very much non-regulation. Mostly, the sports we played were part of gym class. To really put it in perspective, they started the school’s basketball team while I was in high school. Well, 45 years later, like many other Ursuline schools, we are quite a sports powerhouse. Approximately 80% of our students play at least one sport and many play several.

I can’t think of one thing that I could say to you this morning that you don’t already know. But I am excited about being here and having the opportunity to briefly tell you from a school President’s perspective why I think athletics are such a great vehicle for teaching our mission. Although I won’t be telling you anything new, I hope this conference is a time for you to pause, take yourself out of the day-to-day rat race and reflect on all that you do, hear how others do the same things and go back to your schools feeling somewhat refreshed. I hope you go back, also - reminded of the incredible significance of your job and how it plays out in the lives of the students we serve.

Athletics is an absolute laboratory for teaching the Ursuline mission, and for providing opportunities for our girls to practice living it out. In my opinion, there is no other academic course or extra-curricular activity that approximates the real world like being part of an athletic team does. Yet it is approximated in an environment that is reasonably controlled – and that allows us the perfect opportunity to teach our students how to approach their involvement in sports, and thus life.

I looked at all of our missions on line and, not surprisingly, they are remarkably similar. They all focus on development of the whole person, respect for the uniqueness of the individual, importance of building community, Serviam, development of our students into leaders and faith formation and spirituality. Again, if you think of athletics as a laboratory, all of these things can be developed through athletics.

Most of us have as part of our mission the Development of the Whole Person – athletics certainly offers that. Girls have the opportunity improve their fitness, to develop their physical and mental self, and to explore their physical strengths and limitations. Athletics complement the academics, high school social life, their faith development and the arts in helping them become well-rounded people.

So, let’s look at some of the aspects of athletics that prepare our girls for leadership.

Leadership – Preparation & Discipline

One of the biggest components to leadership is preparation. I’m going to say preparation and discipline because I think they go together. Look at the amount of time and focus athletes spend preparing. I’m continually amazed by their commitment. There are hours and hours spent practicing. Coaches encourage students to exercise and condition themselves in addition to practice. Coaches teach skill development in practice. Strategizing for games is another thing they learn. Often, someone will scout the other team and the coaches prepare a strategy for how to play against that particular team. How different is this than working to make a major sale in business? Business people have to look at Who are our competitors? How can we differentiate ourselves? How can we best prepare our presentation? There is a direct correlation. We see it in our own Admission Offices. We brand ourselves, prepare our materials and our presentations, open houses, Wednesday tours or however each school does this. We keep abreast of our competing schools and learn to differentiate ourselves from them so that we can attract students to our schools. We obviously want our students to be successful in whatever they choose to do. Preparation, discipline and strategy are very important lessons they learn through athletics.

Leadership - Teambuilding

There are very few things in life where success is the result of only one person’s work. There is nearly always a team behind that person. Although an athlete needs to prepare herself individually, for example, stay in shape, practice her skills, push herself, etc. the only way she will see real success is through teamwork. Athletics is one of the very best places a person can learn teamwork. Learning to work together, to value each other,encourage each other, sometimes needing to stifle one’s own individual goals for the good of the team - are extremely important lessons for our students to take on to their careers, volunteer work, with their families – just about anywhere they go in life. Athletics prepares them very well for this.

Leadership - Time Management

I hear it all the time from students that athletics helped them manage their time better because “they HAD to learn how to manage their time” if they were going to juggle practices and games with studying, preparing for tests, and sometimes even part-time jobs. I think all of us have seen students struggle with thisinitially. But most of them figure it out. It’s another extremely important leadership skill – for life.

Handling their own mistakes or losing games

Dealing with failure – and the ability to get back up after you’ve failed – is a highly under-rated ability. It’s extremely important.You may have heard Thomas Edison’s quote, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Henry Ford went broke on various businesses 5 times before the Ford Motor Company was wildly successful. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because, "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Stand back up and keep on going – that’s what athletics teaches our students – and it can be great practice field for this important life skill. I see this as one of the most important skills we teach our girls, and I think we teach it well. Determination and resilience are trademarks of an Ursuline girl. Athletics is one of the best vehicles for teaching it and practicing it.

Similar to making mistakes, losing games and especially tournamentscan be particularly disappointing. Losing a game or a tournament helps teach children that these are temporary losses that can be overcome next time. The same goes for setbacks later in life.

Finally, losses teach us humility and compassion, virtues that are very important to our Christian faith and were important to St. Angela and which she passed on to the Ursuline sisters and ultimately to our students.

Leadership – Respect for coach’s and referee’s decisions

Again, this is extremely important skill for life. Our girls will go into jobs with bosses they might not like or rules within the company that they think are silly. They have to navigate them appropriately. They have to be respectful. I watched a person get fired for exactly this earlier in my career. This person badmouthed every decision her boss made. It’s particularly difficult in athletics because the referee’s call is made and you have no time to reflect on it or think about how you wish to respond. You have to respond respectfully right there - in the very heat of the moment. An author I read on the internet, Dr. Tamar Chansky, put it succinctly, she said, “It is an essential life skill to learn how to move past our first reaction (which may be anger or disappointment) and go for the second reaction, which is usually more balanced. And it is best to learn this skill in childhood.”

Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship may be the most important thing we teach through athletics. I watched a tournament basketball game a few years ago where the coach clearly had not taught his athletes the importance of this trait. I know there are rough games but in this game, the opposing players were out and out shoving and tripping our girls until finally one of our girls was shoved so hard she flew up into the air and when she landed, she tore her ACL. And that wasn’t the end of it. In the congratulations line, one of the opposing players, hauled off and punched one of our players in the jaw. It was unbelievable! Unfortunately, both the coach and the referee let our girls down in that game. Actually, they let down the girls on both teams by not stopping it, but that’s another story. I was so proud of our girls. They did not retaliate. In fact, they stopped shaking hands and went straight to the locker room where a number of us met them and we prayed. It was a powerful moment.

We advanced in the tournament and several days later, we played another game and the team, just prior to the start of the game came over to our injured player who was on the bench and publicly gave her a bouquet of balloons and a get-well card. What a stark contrast that was to the week before. What a beautifuldisplay of good sportsmanship that was! Our girls will never forget either of these experiences.

Good sportsmanship is the ultimate outcome we are looking for from our students involved in athletics. Later in life, it is called other things, such as “taking the high road”, showing respect for others, professionalism, class – and big surprise - Christianity. It leads to much greater success and happiness in life.

So, the bottom line is that all the things I have just shared with you that I believe our students can learn from athletics DON’T JUST HAPPEN.

You are the difference makers.

I was at a UES Board meeting last week in Dallas. The subject of athletic directors came up and one of our board members said, "Oh my, that was the hardest job I ever had." That's what I believe - you in this room have one of the hardest jobs in our schools.

It’s hard because you have so many constituencies to deal with. Parents, referees, coaches, students, bus drivers, maintenance people, administrators. You have games to schedule and reschedule, busses to schedule. You have websites to update and permission slips to collect and parent orientations to prepare and deliver. And God forbid if you pay more attention to basketball or

volleyball than track or swimming. Or if you don’t celebrate a student who plays a sport outside of school - like bowling for example for us. And of course, in the middle of all this, you get constant interruptions from people needing something from you. Not to mention that your job is really 24-7, unlike most other positions at a school. I watch Sue Heiss at our school and I don’t know how she does it.

But your positions are arguably among the most powerful in our schools - in terms of accomplishing our mission. So, although staying focused on what’s important is a real challenge, you must do it – and I know you do – do it - because you are the guardians of the mission.

You set everything in motion to make all this wonderful life learning happen. You impact girl’s futures every day. In my opinion there are three essential things that you do

1)Selecting, training and supervising your coaches. Because, like classroom teachers, they are with the student athletes on the front line and everything they do and say is being observed. They have a huge influence and it’s your job to make sure that influence is proper and in line with our mission.

2)The expectations you set for parents, coaches and athletes and the way you handle violations of this. When you stand up and tell our spectators to stop inappropriately booing a ref’s call, as I’ve seen Sue do – you are reinforcing everything we are teaching them.

3)You are a huge role model for our girls. Believe me, they notice everything you do and say – or don’t say.

Your job is not to make sure everything is perfect for them, but it is your job to be sure they are learning the important things. You can't save them from the heartbreak of losing a championship game or the disappointment of being injured right before an important game NOR would you want to.

I want to tell a couple of stories.

I asked a niece of mine who graduated from our school, what she thought she learned about life from her athletic experiences. Within 5 minutes I got the following text back:

Emma’s response:

“There's so much I could say!! I would say athletics really helped me to see my potential as a leader....I learned the importance of setting an example for my teammates and always being a supportive teammate. Most importantly I learned to find success in the accomplishments of my teammates. In other words, being an athlete at Ursuline helped to enforce and develop my understanding that I must put others (my team) first. Success was only possible when everyone put their personal goals aside and united under one goal. Yet, if that goal was not reached, my coaches emphasized the importance of resilience.....An Ursuline athlete never gives up...and we have smaller teams so we all have to work a little extra harder. So overall this had an impact on my character because the values that I learned through being an Ursuline athlete (responsibility, humility, dedication, resilience) will always remain a part of me.”

Another student wrote a great response to a question on a college application and she told me I could share it with you.

“I have been involved in athletics for as long as I can remember. As I matured, my teams became much more competitive, and at times, situations appeared to be unfair. Looking back on the experiences, the events seem so trivial now, but at the time it felt like the end of the world. On one athletic team in particular, I had originally secured myself a starting spot, only to have it taken away from me in the blink of an eye. I met with my coach to get a better understanding of the situation, and was told to re-earn my starting position at practice. After this meeting, in addition to trying to improve my own skills, I continued to promote the team because as team captain, it was my responsibility to encourage and improve the team despite any difficulties I was faced with at the time. That year, I grew so much as a person and a teammate.”

I know you have many stories of your own like this.

This is incredibly impactful experiential learning that is forming the character of our students – for life. And you are the people in our Ursuline network of schools who are responsible for it.

Do any of you have any mission-oriented stories you would like to share?

In closing I would like to play this video for you.

Click here.